5H 



We Mnst Preserve Our Forests; Protect Our Watersheds, and 
Promote the Utilities of Our Rivers From Source to Sea— 
This Is the Plain Duty of tlie Hour, an.l if We Fail to 
Do It, We Invite the Deluge and Create the Desert. 



t.-^-'^o,^ 



^^ >^ SPEECH 



OP 



HON. WILLIAM SULZER 

OF NEW YORK 



IN TUB 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 



THURSDAY, MAY 21, 190S 



41201— 7S09 



WJVSHirsiGTorvt 

1908 






nj> 






SPEECH 

OF 

II OX. WILLIAM SULZEE. 



The House having under consideration the hill (H. R. 21986) to en- 
able any State to cooperate with any other State or States, or with the 
United States, for the conservation of the navigability of navigable 
rivers, and to provide for the appointment of a commission — 

Mr. SULZER said: 

Mr. Speaker : Tliis bill to create a forest commission to 
investigate something and report next year nothing regarding 
the protection of the forests within the watersheds of the White 
Monntains and the Southern Appalachian range is a sad disap- 
pointment to the real friends of genuine forest preservation. It 
means more delay — and procrastination has been the order of 
the day — in this momentous matter. We had indulged the hope 
that the Appalachian forest reservation bill would be reported 
and passed before this session of Congress adjourned; but, alas, 
our fondest expectations are again destined to be shattered by 
this little apology for the real legislation so earnestly demanded 
by the far-seeing people of the country. 

Now, I want to say that I am opposed to this delay. I look 
with suspicion ou this makeshift. Instead of the House of 
Representatives responding to the appeals of the people and 
meeting this great question in a broad and statesmanlike way, 
the powers that be in this House direct that the commitee bring 
in this bill to delegate away our legislative rights to a perfunc- 
tory commission. It is a great mistake. The people are being 
humbugged. The pretext will not answer. We are sent here 
to legislate ou this question, and ou all other questions, and we 
should not seek to escape the responsibility. The Congress is 
the lawmaking body of this Government. The people elected 
us to legislate, and if we are too indolent or too ignorant or too 
incompetent to do it, we ought to be manly enough to say so and 
44201—7809 3 



, 4: 

resign and go home and let the people elect Members who are 
capable enough and competent enough and industrious enough 
to legislate, not only on this matter, but on all other matters. 

I am opposed to delegating away the powers of the legislative 
branch of the Government to irresponsible commissions. I am 
against legislation by commission. I do not like too much 
commission-made law. I am opposed to this legislative com- 
mission business — to a commission to investigate the tariff 
schedules, to a commission to report on banking and currency, 
to a commission to look into this matter of forest preservation, 
and to commissions to do various other things. It is all wrong. 
It all means delay — more procrastination. These commissions 
to do this, and to do that, and to do something or other, are 
merely excuses for delay and for junketing parties, called into 
being to have a good time, created to spend the people's money, 
and nine times out of ten utterly useless and barren of benefi- 
cial results. We are sent here to do the people's business. Let 
us obej- their mandates and endeavor to meet their expecta- 
tions. 

I am in favor of preserving our forests bj- intelligent forestry 
legislation. I am in favor of protecting our watersheds, and 
utilizing to the utmost our numerous rivers as thes^ flow from 
the mountains to the seas; and I believe tliat nov^' is as good a 
time to begin as some time in the future. We must preserve 
our forests ; we must protect our watersheds ; we must promote 
the utilities of our rivers from source to sea. This is the plain 
duty of the hour; and if we fail to do it, v\-e invite the deluge 
and create the desert. This is a great economical question. I 
warn the House that delay in this matter is dangerous. Let us 
do our duty now and not endeavor to escape responsibility by 
delegating our powers to this counnission that will be impotent 
to accomplish permanent results. 

Now, what does this little commission bill do? Briefly, it 
provides, in the first section, that the consent of the United 
States is given to any State to enter into any compact or 
agreement, not in violation of the knv of the United States, 
with any other State or States. The second section makes an 
appropriation of $100,000 to enable the Secretary of Agricul- 
44201—7800 



tnro to enter into cooperative arrangements witli tlio States or 
witli owners of private woodlands for tlie administration and 
utilization of tlie same. Just wliat the result of that will be 
I linow not. The remaining sections of the bill provide for the 
appointment of a commission of ten memboi-s, five to be ap- 
pointed by the Speaker of the House and five to be appointed by 
the presiding officer of the Senate; these ten to take into con- 
sideration all questions relating to the proposed forest reserva- 
tions of the White and Appalachian mountains. 
\ The action of the committee in this matter— from the bill to 
do something, now pending in the committee, to this commission 
bill, just sprung on us, to do nothing— is the merest kind of a 
makeshift— the rankest kind of an apology— intended only for 
delay and to escape responsibility; and the whole proceeding is 
most deplorable, I regret it exceedingly, and I appeal to the 
wisdom and to the sagacity and to the patriotism of the Mem- 
bers of Congress to do something substantial now before it is 
too late. We are behind the age on this all-important question 
of the conservation of our natural resources. We have received 
a mighty heritage and with it a corresponding responsibility. 
iWe are the trustees for future generations; and we will be 
false to ourselves, false to our country, and false to our trust 
if we do not do our duly and preserve, in so far as we can, 
what we enjoy for the benefit of those that come after us. Let 
us be true to our trust and true to the ages yet to come, and 
always bear in mind that willful waste makes woeful want. 

Mr. Speaker, we must preserve our forests ; we must protect 
our watersheds; we must look after our rivers, fi'om their 
source to the sea. It is one of the most important questions of 
the day, and further delay is criminal. We must vrake up before 
our forests are denuded and our rivers destroyed. After the 
forests are gone this is what will happen : The soil dries up, 
loses its fibrous life, and by erosion is rapidly washed down 
into the rivers, whore it is deposited to the detriment of naviga- 
tion, necessitating millions of dollars of Government money each 
year for dredging. The heavier forest debris, which is not 
removed, dries up and becomes a tangled mass of timber, that 
takes fire from the hunter's or the woodman's match, or when 
44201— 7S09 



i 



6 

the lightning strikes it. The fires, beginning in this debris, 
spread to the forests that are left and every year do incalcula- 
ble damage; then the springs and the multitude of tiny brooks 
that feed the rivers are dried up, and the latter in the dry sea- 
son get very low, causing enormous loss of the water power 
which runs the great mills ; then the snows melt and the heavy 
later rains begin. There is no soil now to hold back and dis- 
tribute equably this downfall on the steep slopes, and so we 
have the devastating floods, which annually entail enormous 
losses. 

And so, sir, it follows like the night the day that after the 
devastation of the forests comes the deluge and then a barren 
waste and then death to all living things and then the rainless 
desert. It is thus that annihilation has come upon some of the 
greatest empires and richest domains that the world has ever 
seen. Once upon a time, before the mountain forests of Leb- 
anon were destroyed, Palestine blossomed like a rose and sup- 
ported in much affluence a population of 10,000,000. The moun- 
tains have long been denuded. Forbidding slopes, barren and 
ugly, rear their weird forms sharply above dismal and desolate 
valleys. Scarcely •(100,000 people remain in all the region, and 
most of these are in hopeless and abject poverty. 

The valley of Babylon, where once stood the metropolis of 
the world, is abandoned and forlorn. Nineveh, the magnificent 
city of the ancients, is buried beneath the shifting sands of 
time. Desert wastes cover the sites of Carthage and Tyre and 
Sidon, yet bountiful nature once provided for these places its 
richest gifts of fertility and abundance. Antioch is gone and 
all Syria is a scene of irreparable ruin. The destruction of her 
forests, followed by the disappearance of her soil and the de- 
cay of her industries, foreshadowed the inevitable result. Man 
destroyed the forests, and the lands which once flowed with 
milk and honey were transformed into desert wastes. One- 
third of China, it is said, has been rendered uninhabitable, and 
the ruined hills of southern Italy will no longer support their 
population, and testify in mute eloquence the consequence of 
forest slaughter. Is such a mournful record of devastation and 
destruction, of decay and annihilation, to be repeated in Amer- 

44201— 7S09 



ica? I trust not. But I warn my fellow-countrymen that if 
tlae carnival of loot of our natural resources is not stopped, and 
speedily stopped, and the forests administered for perpetual use, 
history will repeat itself, and the inevitable must follow here 
as in other lands. We can not escape if we destroy principal 
and interest. Let us do our duty now or sooner or later this 
will be a national issue that will sweep all opposition aside. 

The intelligent conservation of our wonderful natural re- 
sources means much to our glorious country now, and much 
more in lasting benefits to future generations. The willful 
waste of these natural resources — the devastation of our for- 
ests, the destruction of our watersheds, the elimination of our 
rivers — means decaj- and death and desert wastes, means in the 
centuries yet to come the conditions we now witness in north- 
ern Africa, in western Asia, in Italy, and in Spain. The world 
is' learning by experience. We must learn in the same school. 
We can not have our cake and eat it, too. We can not violate 
natural laws with impunity; we can not neglect fundamental 
principles and escape the consequences; we can not decimate 
our forests and have our rivers, too, and without them our 
fertile fields will ere long be barren wastes. Shall the history 
of the ancients repeat itself here? Shall we never take heed? 
In the story of the past let us realize the dutj' of the present, and 
by intelligently responding to the essential demands of the hour 
we will be true to our trust, true to humanity, true to ourselves, 
and future generations appreciating our work will rise up and 
call us blessed. [Applause.] 

The SPEAKER. The time of the gentleman from New York 
has expired. 

44201— 7S09 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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